James Harden enters the top 10 of the NBA’s all-time scorers, surpassing Carmelo Anthony
James Harden certainly has his detractors, but there are few players in NBA history more effective than the Los Angeles Clippers star at putting points on the board. On Saturday he reached an important milestone.
In the third quarter of the game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, the 36-year-old Harden passed Carmelo Anthony for 10th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with 28,290 points. LeBron James (first) and Kevin Durant (eighth) are the only active players ahead of him.
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Fittingly, given his style of play, Harden did so with a free throw.
Harden finished the game with 34 points on 10-of-18 shooting, 6 assists, 5 rebounds, 4 steals and 4 turnovers. That big night wasn’t enough to lift the struggling Clippers to victory, as the Timberwolves won the game 109-106.
Los Angeles’ record is now 6-18, second-worst in the Western Conference. Between the scandal surrounding Kawhi Leonard and the dysfunction stemming from the Chris Paul situation, it’s hard to think of a worse start for a team that entered this season intending to contend.
Harden has scored in droves since his trade to the Houston Rockets, who turned him into an analytical monster by focusing on generating 3-pointers and free throws. It’s an unwatchable style of play for many fans, emulated by many around the league, but it also turned him into an MVP and perennial All-Star
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Fittingly, Harden is already second on the all-time 3-pointers list (behind only Stephen Curry) and fifth on the all-time free throws list (Karl Malone, James, Moses Malone, Kobe Bryant). He is also 13th on the assists list and fourth on the turnover list.
When trying to explain James Harden, you could do worse than simply rattle off his position in the statistics above.
Where might Harden end up on the list? Since leaving the Rockets, he has averaged 21.0 points per game and 68.5 games in four full seasons. If he were to maintain this pace on average for three more seasons, he would reach 4,321 points, enough to surpass Michael Jordan for fifth place and within striking distance of Bryant for fourth.
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List of all-time NBA scores
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 38,387